Growing up, it was a rarity when we actually ate at a restaurant or even fast food. Come to think of it, there weren’t many fast food places around when I was growing up. So that left the meals and cooking up to mama. Well, she’s 82 and she’s about ready to throw in the […]

Nurture and nature — both make us the people that we are. When I started taking a little time to really think about the people I come from, more things in my life make a lot more sense! I know where I get my love of sports, my passion for good food and digging in […]

I’m writing this blog today on the Fourth of July and I can’t dare think about an Independence Day without remembering the summers of my childhood. Almost every July was spent at my two grannies’ houses back in Oklahoma. They lived in little bitty towns but that didn’t matter. My cousins also descended on both […]

Being a hero is not just for those who do one heroic deed, they are for people like my daddy who was a hero every day of his life. He’s always been my hero. From my earliest memories, no one would dare compare to him. When I was very small, he worked three jobs to […]

What is a Nursing Home? A nursing home is a facility—staffed with skilled nurses and health-care aides—where people can receive medical attention on a 24-hour basis. The patients do not need intensive hospital care, but they cannot be cared for at home. Some nursing homes do resemble a hospital with a medical staff that gives […]

Many terms come to mind when an older worker loses a job — none of them pleasant: “put out to pasture,” “given the squeeze,” “aged out,”  “consigned to the scrap heap.” And losing a job later in life may seem especially fraught now that the gleam of The Golden Retirement Years has faded for older […]

I don’t have any amazing talents to hand down to my children and grandchildren. That’s okay. I still have passions that I just love to share. How about you? From one generation to the next, it used to be a given that the mama would teach her daughter to cook and sew. The daddy would […]

“Imagine that you were unable to communicate with the outside world,” challenges Molly Fisher, former director of Educational and Social Services at the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America. The Foundation is a nonprofit founded in 2002 by a caregiver whose mother suffered from the disease years ago, when little information was available about it. Initially formed […]

Timing is everything when it comes to life. We need to be aware of our own optimal timing as well as what timing suits our older loved one. We also have to be flexible both with ourselves and with our seniors. Are you a morning person? Or do you like to sleep late and be […]

Medical records can be powerful tools in helping to manage healthcare. But people seeking out medical information about themselves or friends and family members often run into a roadblock with a formidable-sounding name: The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, or HIPAA. Originally intended to protect the privacy of patients’ personal and medical […]